Book Information: Harper's Quine, the

Enjoying the May Day dancing at Glasgow Cross, Gilbert Cunningham, notary-in-training, sees not only the woman who is to be murdered, but her murderer as well.

Gil is a recently qualified lawyer whose family still expect him to enter the priesthood. When he finds the body of a young woman in the new building at Glasgow Cathedral he is asked to investigate, and identifies the corpse as the May Day harper's mistress and runaway wife of a cruel nobleman, John Semphill. Together with Maistre Pierre, a French master-mason contracted to work on the new building at Glasgow Cathedral, Gil begins asking questions and seeking a murder weapon in the lanes and yards of the city. He finds himself dealing with Semphill and his household, and a varied cast of characters, not forgetting Maistre Pierre's daughter, Alys, a notably lively and attractive young woman.